Arnon Grunberg

Hinterzarten

Every other year at the end of summer, when nature’s decay has already set in on the sly, I make a pilgrimage to the village of Hinterzarten in the Black Forest. That is where my mother resides in summer. In the even years; in odd years she stays home.
What we should become there is mother and son, but mother and son assumes a hierarchy, a role-playing to which both parties more or less conscientiously adhere. In our case there is no hierarchy, more like an almost tender cease-fire between two people who realize they cannot dominate each other, even though they have tried for years by every means, both allowable and unallowable.
Much more than mother and son we are Bonnie and Clyde, two people who fall just outside the order of things, as though they consider that order a threat.
Success in society’s sense of the word, is Nothing, the Big Nothing. A nihilist is a person who strives for social success. My mother strives for something else, but don’t ask me what, because she’s seen society for what it is: a mousetrap ready to snap shut.
The older I become, the more I become my mother. Days, sometimes weeks, go by in which I live in the knowledge that I have made my mother, that she’s the product of my travail, and that I must protect and provide for her like a child.
On Wednesday morning I fly into Zurich. From there I take a taxi to Hinterzarten, the German border is not far, and I call my mother to tell her I’m on my way.
When I arrive at the little boarding house where she has been coming for years and years, she’s standing on the corner, weeping.
Departure and arrival are accompanied by deep sobbing, and betweentimes many a tear falls as well. It’s nothing to worry about.
She says: “I thought you’d been kidnapped by a criminal.”
Every year my mother takes fewer clothes with her on vacation. Before long she’ll be making the train trip from Amsterdam to Hinterzarten in a state of almost complete undress, to express her dédain for this world and its graven images.
Then she sees my suitcase. “Child,” she shouts, “what a huge suitcase for one little week! You’ll lift yourself a hernia. That’s not a suitcase, that’s a boat.”
I carry the suitcase up the stairs. Everything smells of wood.
My room is a child’s room; two separate beds, a sink and a balcony. To take a shower, I have to go to my mother’s room.
The boarding house is run by Mrs. Eckert, and I don’t mean to be blunt, but she is a witch. One, however, who occasionally shows her good side.
Years ago my mother was imprudent enough to give her a German translation of my novel Blue Mondays, and ever since Mrs. Eckert considers every woman in my vicinity to be a whore. Except my mother, of course.
Now that we’re in the room and no one can see us, I hug my mother.
“You’re looking good,” I say.
“You think so?”
She looks at me disbelievingly. “I’m shrinking, one centimeter a year. I talked to your sister about it yesterday.”
“And what does my sister say?”
“That she’ll love me even when I become a leprechaun.”
There’s nothing else to say, so I suggest we get something to eat. When I’m not there my mother hides food in the dresser and eats in her room, but when I’m around we’re allowed to have lunch in a restaurant.
In the evening we eat dinner on my balcony. Mostly hairy brie, because a dresser is not a refrigerator, which is why hair sometimes grows on the brie my mother hides in it. But she says: “I just cut off the hair, then you don’t even notice the difference.” Hairy brie is not my favorite cheese, but I’ve resigned myself to it. Even in the hairy brie I see a human in revolt.
“All right,” she says, “we’ll get something to eat. But first I want you to say hello to Mrs. Eckert.” She’s lugging around a big red rucksack that’s already about twenty years old, and in which she transports the spoils of the day.
We ring Mrs. Eckert’s bell. She looks around to see how many whores I’ve brought with me this time, but is forced to note disappointedly that I’m alone, with my mother.
We walk down the mountain, the boardinghouse is on a mountain, and my mother says: “She had an attack a couple of years ago, but she keeps hanging that sign ‘Zimmer Frei’ on the door. Mrs. Eckert’s eyes are bigger than her heart.”
My mother is a master at mangling expressions and thinking up new ones. In fact, she’s a poet.
We go to the outdoor restaurant we go to every year, where we traditionally eat trout. The melancholy wells up. Hinterzarten heralds the season of melancholy, and my mother says: “Listen to the accents these German people have. It hurts your ears. Plebs always made your father nervous too. Well, okay, I guess common people are particularly hearty.”
“Mama,” I say, “Dutch is not a secret code.”
I’ve heard that drinking beer is good for your heart, so I ply my mother with beer. When our trout arrives, she homes in on a group of Dutch people at another table.
“Look,” she says, “those people are Dutch. The Dutch are like weeds, they pop up all over the place.”
I lean over my fish and start picking out the bones.
“I read in the magazines here that Maxima had a miscarriage. You never hear about that in Holland.”
My mother doesn’t buy magazines, she reads them at the local newsstand.
“You talk about ugly women? That Princess Maxima is the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Yes, Mama,” I say. And then, to change the subject: “Aren’t we lucky to have met each other?”
“You can say that again, but why did that witch-woman take my plate?”
She points at an older waitress who just took away a plate with only bones on it.
“I wasn’t finished with those bones yet,” my mother says.
She imposes order on the chaos. People are divided into categories: witch-people and duds.
Duds is the milder category.
Sometimes I ask: “Is that a witch-person too?”
“No,” she says, “that’s just a dud.”
“The Germans haven’t changed a bit,” she says, “and they haven’t learned a thing.”
“But Mama,” I say, “all she did was take away a plate of bones.”
“And they never will learn, because they’re not like us. Look at these people stuffing their faces. How can you be so fat and still stuff your face like that?”
“Mama,” I say, “fat is a fairly international word.”
We get up. My mother crams some bread and paper napkins into her rucksack. “I paid for them,” she says, “and I use the napkins for toilet paper when I travel.”
A week later I leave.
Back in New York, I call her.
“You ask me how I’m doing?” she says. “I’m here all on my own now, and that room you had is full of witch-people who slam doors. All I do all day is talk to the birds.”
For a moment there I wonder whether I should be worried. Should I have stayed longer? You’re better off talking to me than to birds.
Then I realize that isn’t necessary.
Soon I’ll be talking to the birds myself. My mother’s soul and mine have smelted.
There’s no better way to sum up what I do for a living: talking to the birds.